Letterhead Design
Bilingual company letterheads that carry the right particulars, print cleanly in an office laser printer and work as an editable template for everyday letters and quotations.
A letterhead is the page your company signs its name to. Quotations, offer letters, bank correspondence, no objection letters and contract cover notes all go out on it, and the reader often judges how established a business is before reading the first line. We design letterheads for companies in Dubai and across the UAE that look composed, carry the details the law and your counterparties expect, and still behave properly when someone in accounts types a letter at four in the afternoon.
This page explains what a good letterhead design for Dubai companies should show, how to lay out Arabic and English together, and why the digital template matters as much as the printed sheet. It sits within our print and stationery design range.
Particulars
For companies governed by the federal Commercial Companies Law, Article 13 of Federal Decree Law No. 32 of 2021 says that contracts, documents, correspondence and application forms issued by the company must bear its name, legal form, registration number and address. If the share capital is shown, the amount stated must be the paid share capital. If a company is in liquidation, its documents must say so.
That makes the footer of any letterhead design a compliance item for a Dubai company, not decoration. We take the wording directly from your licence and registration documents, and we ask you to confirm it with whoever manages your company records before files go to print. Free zone companies should also check their authority’s own rules.
Layout
The most common UAE arrangement mirrors the two languages across the header. Arabic reads from the right, as the W3C Arabic layout requirements describe, so it takes the top right corner while English takes the top left, and the logo sits between or above them.
Company name in English on the left, in Arabic on the right, matched in visual weight rather than point size. Arabic type often needs to be set larger to look equal.
Licence number, address and contacts run across the foot of the page. Numbers are written once where possible, since digits read left to right in both languages.
The template needs two paragraph styles, one left aligned for English letters and one right aligned for Arabic letters, so staff never fight the alignment by hand.
Specification
UAE offices print on A4, 210 × 297 mm, from the ISO 216 series. Before designing, we mark out these areas so the letter itself has enough room.
| Zone | What goes there | Practical note |
|---|---|---|
| Header | Logo and company name in both languages | Keep it shallow so a one page letter stays one page |
| Address window area | Recipient address | Align with your window envelope when letters are posted |
| Reference line | Date, reference number, subject | Set as fields in the template, not typed freehand |
| Body | The letter | Generous side margins, since office printers cannot print to the edge |
| Signature and stamp | Signatory and company stamp | Leave clear space so a company stamp does not sit on text |
| Footer | Legal particulars and contacts | Small but legible when photocopied or scanned |
Two versions
Most letterhead designs in Dubai now live two lives. A small run is printed by a commercial printer for signed originals, then fed through an office laser printer when a letter is produced. The rest of the time, staff open a template and export a PDF. The design has to survive both.
For the printed stock, avoid heavy solid colour that bleeds to the edge unless your printer confirms the paper and ink are safe in laser printers; some finishes and inks react to the heat of the fuser. For the template, we build real header and footer areas and paragraph styles, so the layout does not break when someone pastes text from an email. If your invoices use the same header, remember the Federal Tax Authority lists what a valid tax invoice must include, among them the words tax invoice and the supplier’s name, address and TRN. The letterhead design gives that information a consistent home; the invoice template must still contain it all.
In letterhead design, the Dubai errors that matter most are the quiet ones. A trade name that differs by one word from the licence. An old address after an office move. A licence number with two digits swapped in the Arabic column. A mobile number of a staff member who has left. A header so tall that every standard letter spills onto a second page. Each of these is avoidable if the letterhead is briefed together with the business cards, envelopes and email signatures, since all of them repeat the same details.
If your logo or colours are still being settled, start with brand identity design and then roll the stationery out from it. Every letterhead project begins with a fixed written quote, scoped to your brief, and ends with a press PDF for your printer plus the editable template.
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Read the articleStraight answers
Many companies now keep a small printed stock for signed originals and use a digital template for everything else. We design both from the same layout, so a printed letter and a PDF letter look identical to the recipient.
Yes, the header can sit on an invoice template. The invoice itself must still contain every item the Federal Tax Authority lists, such as the words tax invoice and the supplier's TRN, so check the template with your accountant.
Usually not. The letter content is the point, and a restrained header looks more confident on formal correspondence. A larger mark can work on a cover letter for proposals, which can be a separate design.
Yes, and we recommend it. The first page carries the full header and footer; following pages carry a slim version with the company name and page number, which keeps long contracts and proposals tidy.
Free zone entities are governed by their own authority's regulations as well as federal law where it applies. Ask your free zone which particulars it expects on correspondence, and we will lay them out.
Sources
Fixed price, in writing
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